I stepped suddenly to the door, opened it, and drew a long, deep breath of relief, as I found myself alone in the darkness. "Now," said I, "I have done tampering with God's best gift; I will be satisfied with the natural sunshine which beams from His Word and from His Works; I have learned wisdom at the expense of shame!" I exulted in my new freedom, in my restored purity of soul; and the wind, that swept down the dark, lonely street, seemed to exult with me. The rains beat upon me, but I heeded them not; nay, I turned aside from the homeward path, in order to pass by the house where Agnes lived. Her window was dark, and I knew she was sleeping, lulled by the storm; but I stood a moment below, in the rain, and said aloud, softly,--
"Now, Agnes, I belong wholly to you! Pray to God for me, darling, that I may never lose the true light I have found at last!"
My healing, though complete in the end, was not instantaneous. The habit of the trance, I found, had really impaired the action of my will. I experienced a periodic tendency to return to it, which I have been able to overcome only by the most vigorous efforts. I found it prudent, indeed, to banish from my mind, as far as was possible, all subjects, all memories, connected with Spiritualism. In this work I was aided by Agnes, who now possessed my entire confidence, and who willingly took upon herself the guidance of my mind at those seasons when my own governing faculties flagged. Gradually my mental health returned, and I am now beyond all danger of ever again being led into such fatal dissipations. The writing of this narrative, in fact, has been a test of my ability to overlook and describe my experience without being touched by its past delusions. If some portions of it should not be wholly intelligible to the reader, the defect lies in the very nature of the subject.
It will be noticed that I have given but a partial explanation of the spiritual phenomena. Of the genuineness of the physical manifestations I am fully convinced, and I can account for them only by the supposition of some subtile agency whereby the human will operates upon inert matter. Clairvoyance is a sufficient explanation of the utterances of the Mediums,--at least of those which I have heard; but there is, as I have said before, something in the background,--which I feel too indistinctly to describe, yet which I know to be Evil. I do not wonder at, though I lament, the prevalence of the belief in Spiritualism. In a few individual cases it may have been productive of good, but its general tendency is evil. There are probably but few Stiltons among its apostles, few Miss Fetterses among its Mediums; but the condition which accompanies the trance, as I have shown, inevitably removes the wholesome check which holds our baser passions in subjection. The Medium is at the mercy of any evil will, and the impressions received from a corrupt mind are always liable to be accepted by innocent believers as revelations from the spirits of the holy dead. I shall shock many honest souls by this confession, but I hope and believe that it may awaken and enlighten others. Its publication is necessary, as an expiation for some of the evil which has been done through my own instrumentality.
I learned, two days afterwards, that Stilton (who was not seriously damaged by my blow) had gone to New York, taking Miss Fetters with him. Her ignorant, weak-minded father was entirely satisfied with the proceeding. Mrs. Stilton, helpless and heart-broken, remained at the house where our circle had met, with her only child, a boy of three years of age, who, fortunately, inherited her weakness rather than his father's power. Agnes, on learning this, insisted on having her removed from associations which were at once unhappy and dangerous. We went together to see her, and, after much persuasion, and many painful scenes which I shall not recapitulate, succeeded in sending her to her father, a farmer in Connecticut. She still remains there, hoping for the day when her guilty husband shall return and be instantly forgiven.
My task is ended; may it not have been performed in vain!
JOHN ANDRE AND HONORA SNEYD.
Many of our readers will remember the exquisite lines in which Béranger paints the connection between our mortal lives and the stars of the sky. With every human soul that finds its way to earth, a new gem is added to the azure belt of heaven. Thenceforth the two exist in mutual dependence, each influencing the other's fate; so that, when death comes to seal the lips of the man, a flame is paled and a lamp extinguished in the gulf above. In every loosened orb that shoots across the face of night the experienced eye may trace the story and the fall of a fellow-being. Youth, beauty, wealth, the humility of indigence and the pride of power, alike find their term revealed in the bright, silent course of the celestial spark; and still new signs succeed to provoke the sympathy or dazzle the philosophy of the observer.
"Quelle est cette étoile qui file,
Qui file, file, et disparait?"
It is unfortunate that such a pretty manner of accounting for the nature and origin of falling stars should be unsustained by sound astronomical data, and utterly discountenanced by Herschel and Bond. There is something in the theory very pleasant and very flattering to human nature; and there are passages in the history of our race that might make its promulgation not unacceptable. When, among the innumerable "patines of bright gold" that strew the floor of heaven, we see one part from the sphere of its undistinguished fellows, and, filling its pathway with radiant light, vanish noiselessly into annihilation, we cannot but be reminded of those characters that, with no apparent reason for being segregated from the common herd, are, through some strange conjuncture, hurried from a commonplace life by modes of death that illuminate their memory with immortal fame. It is thus that the fulfilment of the vow made in the heat of battle has given Jephthah's name a melancholy permanence above all others of the captains of Israel. Mutius would long ago have been forgotten, among the thousands of Roman soldiers as brave as he, and not less wise, who gave their blood for the good city, but for the fortunate brazier that stood in the tent of his enemy. And Leander might have safely passed and repassed the Hellespont for twenty years without leaving anything behind to interest posterity; it was failure and death that made him famous.